The present invention relates to management solutions for the transit industry. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system for managing all off-line transit planning. The planning includes customer schedules, bus routes, bus blocks, vehicle assignments, and driver assignments. The system also provides outputs of necessary information for use by an on-line (real-time) transit management system.
Transit authorities have a variety of off-line planning needs. These include customer schedules and bus routes, creating and organizing bus blocks, making vehicle and driver assignments, and providing the results of off-line planning to an on-line system for real-time transit fleet management. Transit authorities may include mass transit systems such as bus and train lines as well as delivery vehicles, and the like.
Customer schedules refer to the timepoint grid listings that are traditionally presented to a transit user in paper or electronic form. The points shown on a schedule with a corresponding time are called timepoints. Customer schedules are delineated by bus routes, which are graphical representations of the path a bus follows to meet the timepoint schedule. The bus routes run between a series of timepoints.
Transit vehicles (such as buses) do not necessarily move on bus routes that the transit user sees. For example, a bus may cover one part of a bus route and then switch to cover another bus route. The switch may occur at a common point between the bus routes or by using an interline segment, that is a segment between two points on different bus routes. The physical path that a bus follows when performing work is a pattern. Often, a bus will repeat a few patterns throughout the work day. A pattern done by a bus at a specific time of day is a trip. All the trips a bus does during a day taken together form a bus block. In other words, the entire work that one bus does all day is a block.
Every block done on a particular day requires a vehicle assignment. Vehicle assignments may change from day to day depending on vehicle availability and other factors. All blocks also require driver assignments. The work of a driver for an entire day is called a run. Therefore, a run may correspond to all the work for one block, or only part of a block. However, every run done on a particular day requires a driver assignment. Driver assignments are traditionally changed on a quarterly basis.
After off-line planning is done, an on-line management system uses Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking to provide vehicle management. Thus, an off-line system must provide for geoencoding (that provides an indication of latitude and longitude) of all necessary data. Geoencoding is done at the point level using a geoencoded map.
A variety of systems exist for providing transit off-line planning. No current system covers all needs, including timepoint logging, segment building, route building, pattern building, block building, and scheduling. Multiple systems may be connected to provide a complete solution, however multiple systems are difficult to join, hard to maintain, and are often impossible to connect with an on-line system. Furthermore, the amount of data involved in off-line planning suggests a large advantage to having a single complete system. For example, a typical medium size transit authority deals with 75-100 timepoints, 10-20 routes, 30-50 blocks, 50-100 vehicles, and 75-100 drivers. All the data associated with the transit authority needs to be organized and related with geoencoding.
A particular implementation of off-line transit planning includes the logging of timepoints by traversing the intended route segments and logging each timepoint by hand on a piece of paper and determining position information by using a hand-held GPS device. The logged information is then input (keyed) into a computer database.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a complete transit planning system that implements all off-line planning needs in a single package. It would also be advantageous to provide a system that provides all the necessary functionality of an off-line planning system from geoencoding of spatial data through route and block creation and vehicle/driver assignments. Further, it would be advantageous to provide an off-line transit planning system that interfaces with an on-line complete management system. Further still, it would be advantageous to provide a software product that may be loaded onto a personal computer or laptop computer with an attached GPS receiver for geoencoding that provides at least all of the data collection necessary for off-line transit planning.
An exemplary embodiment of the invention relates to a method of creating a navigation database. The method includes generating a navigation point, generating a segment between two navigation points, generating a path segment from a group of path segments, and generating a path from a list of path segments. The method further includes storing at least one of the position, the navigation point, the segment, the path segment, and the path in a memory device.
Another exemplary embodiment of the invention relates to a method of creating a transit schedule. The method includes generating a transit point, generating a street segment between two transit points, generating a route segment from a group of street segments, and generating a route from a group of route segments. The method further includes storing at least one of the transit point, the street segment, the route segment, and the route in a memory device.
Yet another exemplary embodiment of the invention relates to a scheduling system. The scheduling system includes a position signal receiver that receives a position signal. The scheduling system further includes an information processing unit coupled to the position signal receiver, the information processing unit including a memory, a storage device, and a processor. The information processing unit is programmed to receive position data from the position signal receiver, to receive corresponding position data, and to generate at least one of navigation points, segments, path segments, and paths.